Elin Woods? Yeah, but not that one

Commentary

December 20, 2009

Such a pretty name. A unique name. And almost no one ever said it correctly, until about three weeks ago.

That's when Elin Woods, from Northern Cambria, suddenly saw her incredibly rare name become one of the most famous names on the planet.

"It's odd to hear it," she said. "I'll be listening to the radio and they'll say, 'Elin Woods,' and I stop sometimes and say, 'Wait a minute, why are they talking about me?'"

They're not. They're talking about Tiger Woods' wife, whose legal name may be Elin Nordegren, but for better or worse, 'til divorce do they part, the world sees her as Elin Woods.

The Swedish bombshell, a former model, reportedly will divorce Woods because of a cheating scandal that has tarnished the golfing legend's reputation.

"Pretty much from the start of [the scandal] people were like, 'Oh my gosh, the two of you have the same name,'" the local Elin said.

She recently was checking out at a bookstore and handed the girl at the register her credit card.

"I had to give them my information," Elin said, "and after I said my name, she like stood there and said, 'Oh, hi Tiger's wife."

Tiger's real wife has a very common first name for her native country. But in this country, the peculiar spelling and pronunciation of Elin has never quite caught on.

Couple that name with the last name Woods, and it makes for a remarkably rare combination.

There's a cool Website called HowManyOfMe.com that attempts to calculate the number of people living in the United States who have a given name. The site, which uses census data from 1990 and 2000, admits it cannot always provide an exact number but more of a ballpark estimate.

Out of more than 308 million Americans, the site concluded that there is exactly one person named Elin Woods. She lives 25 miles from Altoona and has always been proud of her name.

Well, almost always.

"Growing up, my name's Elin, and no one knows it," she said. "Those bicycle license plates, you couldn't get Elin on one of those unless you ordered it. But my whole life I was like, 'Why couldn't my mom have named me Sarah?'"

She eventually embraced the name because of its uniqueness.

"After a while, I was like, my name's Elin, and it totally created my persona having a different name," she said. "I like being sort of the only one in a way.

"If someone were to say my name, you have to know me because I'm not Jenny. You can hear Jenny in a mall, and like 10 people could turn around. But for someone to say like, 'Hey, Elin,' it's probably going to be me."

Now, thanks to the scandal, her name forever will be synonymous with the scorned wife of a celebrity.

But hey, at least people know how to pronounce it.

"It's kind of funny because it's like, 'No, no, no, it's E-lin," Woods said. "Throughout my whole life I've been called just a variety of names."

Some people used to joke with her about her last name, asking if she is Tiger's cousin. Then he went and married a lady with the same first name.

"Once they got married, instantly people were like, 'Hey, did you know?' - like I wasn't aware of it," Elin said. "That was always kind of funny."

It went, she added, from being, "Oh yeah, it's your cousin, Tiger," to "now I ended up being married to him. Go figure."

Elin got her first name from her mother, Janice, who has that as her middle name. It originated with Elin's grandmother, who once worked with a woman in Indiana, Pa., who also had a daughter with that name.

"For my friends, my name has kind of become normal to them, so I was the original," Elin said.

She now has to share the name, but that's OK since our local Elin Woods also has a fascinating story she can share for years to come.